What will it be like for the some 10 million people using P2P services at any given moment around the world? The Washington Post looked at that question, but I don’t think it’s fully answered yet. I hope any readers who have file-sharing experts at their house will send me their answers! The Post says that “in the simplest terms, the P2P sites will begin using a filter to keep users from trading copyrighted songs and movies that have not been licensed for sale” and will start charging for content that has been, “ponying up a yet-undetermined fee for each song, and performers and songwriters will get a cut of that fee in royalties.” Here’s an ensuing discussion on this at the Post among writer Frank Ahrens and his readers. For any file-sharer asking “whither BitTorrent?” (or something like that), the San Jose Mercury News has the latest on that P2P technology, as it goes commercial. For the basics on file-sharing, see “File-sharing realities for families” at NetFamilyNews.
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